Beauty and the Beast giveaway!

I haven't done a sponsored post before because nothing that's been proposed was really right for me (or you.)

This one, however, I could not turn down.

Beauty and the Beast! My all-time favourite Disney animation!

I've seen it a hundred times and I, er, may even own the soundtrack. The music is GREAT. And when I was twenty I may have pretended to listen to Triple J and in my discman was actually Belle, Gaston and Be Our Guest.

Oh judge me if you will.

Quick revision:

Want to see it on Disney DVD in high definition, all digitally restored? Stick with me!

We have a dedicated family tradition of Saturday night pizza and movie night. (Pizza every week?! Homemade and covered with vegetables. 100% virtuous.) Popcorn also tends to appear.

So here we are: the family cosies up on the couch. There's an enormous roast pumpkin and goats cheese pizza to share and a lovely bottle of red wine for the grown ups. The lights are dim, just enough to see the pizza on it's way to your mouth. The DVD is in, that wonderful opening music begins and everyone's busting with anticipation.

Is this your family? No, mine neither.

We don't all fit on one couch. The kids don't like goats cheese. I'm breastfeeding, not drinking. There is always some degree of pizza spillage and it's rare we're all genuinely excited with the DVD of choice. (At least Adam's not and is possibly reading the newspaper.)

Beauty and the Beast is a sweet story. It's about deceitful appearances and finding the beauty within. While the view from the door of our pizza/movie nights may usually be messy, a bit disorganized and someone has popcorn in their hair, at its heart is a gorgeous family moment. Bring on the Disney.

We all sat around and LOVED this movie. Again.

I loved Tilly's narration, "Oh, he's dead," every time someone fell over. I loved the fact that 'Gaston' is so funny, the lyrics lost on the kids but really funny for Adam and me. I love the music, I love the brightness of this digitally restored version.

It's available now in stores and for a limited time only, but guess what! As I may, um, already own a copy of this marvelous movie I'm giving this new one away!

Leave a comment and tell me a family tradition you have, however small. I'll pick a winner on Monday night and I'll post anywhere (it says it's Region 4 if that means anything to you!)

xxx

15 Comments on “Beauty and the Beast giveaway!”

Catriona

October 29, 2010 at 8:55 pm

I need it. Let me think of a family tradition…ummm…Thursday night games/dessert/no TV night. And going to the beach every March with Granny. I love Beauty and the Beast. Am singing it now with full orchestral backing in my head.

Sal

October 29, 2010 at 9:22 pm

Oh, wow! This would be a very welcome prize in our house, at least with three out of four of us. Family traditions … let me see … oh, I know … we go to a restaurant called ‘Lee’s Fortuna Court’ in Crows Nest for each family member’s birthday, from the kids’ Nanna to the youngest grandchild. There we eat the most sumptuous Chinese food (truly, it’s fantastic), followed by the richest chocolate cake possible, purchased from an amazing patisserie in Military Road, Neutral Bay. The cake is cut with a huge ceremonial sword knife (at once hilarious and fabulous) – then we have fortune cookies and the kids play under the huge round Chinese restaurant table while everyone finishes. One of the waiters then pops round and magically makes lollipops appear from the kids’ ears. Then we attempt to get back to our cars without incident while the kids try as hard as they can to run onto the road, make as much noise as they can, and generally remind us what msg, chocolate cake and lollipops can do to a person. It’s always fun and always kind of a relief when it’s over. A bit like this comment? Sal xo

International Woman of Mystery

October 29, 2010 at 11:03 pm

Saturday morning: pancakes! Monkey #1 wakes up shouting this fact to the world. Would LOVE a copy of this movie. Don’t own it but adore it. Err, still have Belle’s song on my ipod. Not most favourite though. That crown is definitely worn by the Little Mermaid. Ahhhh.

Alex

October 29, 2010 at 11:27 pm

I have two Cinderella/Snow White obsessed boys (and a small girl who at this stage prefers dinosaurs but things may change) so am feeling the pressure. Can’t think of a tradition that doesn’t involve food though: pizza on Friday nights, honey cakes in the car when we drive down to Canberra (I’m pretty strict about that one), prawn sandwiches on holiday, a particular chocolate slab cake for family birthdays. There’s clearly way too much cake in these traditions…

Every Saturday morning Matt has a well deserved sleep in and the kids and I get up and create breakfast. We then wake Matt up with a coffee and all sit round the table and enjoy a leisurely breakfast with papers etc. This morning the boys are having eggs free range of course (unfortunately I can’t eat at the moment as Eva and eggs/dairy don’t go well with the breast feeding)bacon from our local butcher and tomato/avocado. Looking forward to when I can eat eggs again !!!!

We have fish and chip night every friday night. Kids love it – they get the area ‘prepared’ as it is NEVER eaten at the table… Always a carpet picnic, on the floor in the lounge, out of the paper (well sort of, plates underneath and on a rug so no grease on the carpet!), tv off, just chatting about our weeks. It is a lovely tradition, which when the kids got asked tonight by the neighbours why they didn’t eat at the table, they simply said, ‘because it’s fish and chip night’. What other reason do they need?!

PS. I, too LOVE Beauty and the Beast, asked for it for my birthday – as it’s recently been re-released here too, but no such luck. I did however, get a very funky new ipod nano with touch screen (brother!) and an itunes voucher… maybe the BATB soundtrack to be purchased?!

I have been thinking a lot about family traditions in house of late. We also do the friday night pizza night. At this stage it is mostly from the pizza shop but I have big dreams to one day make home made pizza together talking, laughing and chilling out to great music and wine. Of course I realise it will probably go more along the lines of hoping the pizza won’t burn while I clean up after the huge mess we have made during a sibling fight or melt down. For now I choose to keep dreaming. We make birthday cakes selected from the good old Woman’s Weekly. I am also wanting to start traditions surrounding the seasons. This year we will celebrate Summer with a water ballon fight, Autumn with a leaf crushing fest with the beautiful leaves from our garden and Winter with a sparkler spectaular. I’m still working on Spring? Any ideas anyone? I am hoping these simple ideas will be fun and be able to be shared by all ages. I guess we will see how it goes…

SB

October 31, 2010 at 7:46 pm

I’m with katepickle, don’t enter me into the competition but I had to share my perhaps shocking family tradition-
-No Judgement please-
we are generally a strict family with pretty severe TV viewing rules (at the moment the TV goes on for one hour a week for the 3 kids) and similar diet expectations- no takeaway, home cooked treats and fruit and vege for snacks… yadda yadda… you get the picture so… our terrible, secret is that we have Junk Food Day once every school holidays where the kids get together and choose the menu for the day. Sample menu includes: [breakfast] hot dogs and ice cream, [lunch] chicken nuggets and chips, [dinner] fruit loops and lollies and more ice cream; and the clincher?… all the TV you want!
Yes, they are pretty foul the day after (hence being done in school hols) and yes, people occasionally feel ill at the end of the day but wow, it is so eagerly anticipated and so vastly different from the rest of our life, the kids laugh about it for days before and after and it has been a very fun way to develop our family identity.

I’ve just been chatting with my wonderful mother-in-law about Christmas, and having a laugh about our traditions. She’s had mutiny for years from her 3 kids for terrible crimes like suggesting they might have beef instead of turkey!

I make crazy suggestions each year, that we ought to do some research and see what, say, the Japanese celebrate at this time of year, and try that. Howls of derision are becoming my fun tradition- I also always suggest the evil crime of opening one present each on Christmas Eve. Nothing doing, even though that’s a legitimate one from my childhood.

I’m becoming much more appreciative of how difficult Dave found his one Aussie Christmas, and even more so the year I took him to New York City. My sister worked Christmas Day, and he and I went to the movies and got our main meal from a deli salad bar on the way home!

Serious traditional Christmas coming up, hooray!

And yes, please count me in for Beauty and the Beast! We just saw Disney on Ice, 100 Years of Magic yesterday, at the O2 Arena, and Henry’s knowledge of the characters was pretty much limited to Buzz and Woody. Sad.

Catriona

November 1, 2010 at 6:05 pm

just remembered another tradition – we go on holidays with a group of friends each year, and on the last meal of the holidays you can eat anything you want from the combined leftover food, and you have to eat it with something from the second drawer (like a spatula or tongs or egg separator) – makes for a very funny and messy meal. Gab ate cornflakes with a serving spoon one year…

One of our favorite family traditions is going on the “North Pole Express” train during Christmas time. Every December, a local train station transforms their trains into an express train to the North Pole! Travelers enjoy music, games, and stories on the 1 hour trip to the north pole! We pick up Santa and Mrs. Claus at the North Pole too. We all have alot fo fun, and it really gets us in the Christmas spirit!